


A Sparsely Attended Funeral

by Ace_Strider



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Canonical Character Death, Death, Funeral, Sad, Short, less than 1k words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21585796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ace_Strider/pseuds/Ace_Strider
Summary: Don E at his brother's funeral.
Kudos: 6





	A Sparsely Attended Funeral

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this before season four. Never was sure about posting it but I'm trying to get myself writing more and posting encourages me.

The funeral had been simple. A priest had come, said some words over the cheap coffin (the cheapest the funeral home had to offer), and that was it. They lowered the box into the ground and dirt was steadily placed over it until there was a soft moist mound sitting above the grass. Shockingly, their parents didn’t attend. Most people didn’t, except for a few friends not worried about being seen at a former drug dealer’s funeral. Don E. was the only one who stood by the coffin though and the only one who wouldn’t move when they put the dirt down.  
He had a bottle of cheap drugstore whiskey in his right hand. His left was closed up in a fist, his fingernails digging sharply into his palm. During the service, he’d been biting down hard on his bottom lip but now he wasn’t, letting the pained noises he’d been holding in spill out. He’d always been the vocal one of the two of them, practically deafening next to Scott’s silence. Even in later years, that hadn’t changed, and now it really wouldn’t.

He shook. Gripped the bottle tighter.

There’d been a lot of things he’d been planning on saying today. He was even supposed to give a eulogy, something the priest had smartly realized he was completely incapable of doing before the time had even come. He had wanted to make jokes. He’d wanted to tell the small crowd as many stories about his brother as he could manage. Scott E. had always been the life of the party to him, he’d wanted to share that. Wanted everyone to remember his brother like that, not as a corpse in a wooden box. Killed by a woman pregnant with his child. A child Don E. was never going to meet, never going to know. But that was for the better, wasn’t it? He was no better than Scott; he’d screw up that baby just by being near it.

The bottle nearly fell out of his hand, his palm slick with sweat. He couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t raining but he felt soaked.

He forced himself to open the bottle. He forced himself not to take a drink, not yet. First, he had to pour out half. The whiskey created a puddle on the dirt, the noise of it falling and splashing onto itself the loudest thing he’d ever heard. It was the exact same brand as the first bottle they’d ever drank together, he’d even picked it up from the same store. That’d been before Scott got busted, before their parents had kicked him out. Don had wanted so badly to go with him but Scott had made him stay; to sneak him food, Scott had told him, but it was really to make sure Don didn’t have to survive out in the cold too. It’d only been a little while though, just a few short (agonizingly long) years. Then they’d left the area together, gotten in with Mister Boss, and lived together like they were supposed to. They’d been happy, or as close to it as they’d ever been. Even with Don still visiting their mother, their uncomfortable relationship with Blaine, and their even more uncomfortable relationship with Mister Boss.

Then the boat party had happened. Don hadn’t gone, busy with another job, and every day he wished he had. It’d been the last straw for his brother, the thing that had finally pushed him over the edge. He’d started talking to the Devil and insisted that zombies were everywhere, waiting to come eat his brains. Red eyes and gnashing teeth and do you know Blaine’s one of them, Don? He’s a zombie. But he won't admit it, you know how he is.

Don E. let out a strangled laugh. Blaine as a zombie, yeah he could see it. He kept laughing until the laughter turned into body-shaking sobs. Body-breaking sobs. The rest of the whiskey sloshed almost out of the bottle when he dropped down beside the grave, no longer able to keep himself up. The sounds he was making were inhuman but he didn’t care. Wouldn’t have even if there’d been anyone else there, even if they’d been mocking him.

Tomorrow and every day after he’d make jokes about his brother. He’d laugh about his death, tease his psychosis, laugh like Scott hadn’t meant the world to him. But today he was going to cry and scream and drink whiskey with a little dirt in it because his twin was dead and he wanted to die too.


End file.
